Saturday, December 25, 2010

Well, the 2010 Festivali i Këngës has just wrapped up, and with a commanding victory, Albania has decided that their representative in Düsseldorf will be Aurela Gaçe, with her song "Kënga Ime (My Song)". The 36-year old Aurela is no newcomer to the Albanian music scene; she won the FiK in 1999 and 2001, soon before her nation took part in Eurovision. Albania, in the past, has taken advantage of the long time frame between their National Selection and Eurovision itself to edit, remix, and even translate their song into English (which shouldn't be difficult, as Aurela currently resides in New York), so it's hard to say what Albania's final version will look and sound like. As it now stands, the song is over the 3 minute time length that Eurovision rules enforce, so something will have to change from the original version to the one we'll see on stage in Germany.

(I'd normally post the video of the song here, but it seems that most of the versions of "Kënga Ime" that were on YouTube or DailyMotion have either been removed or have disabled embedding...but here's a link!)

What do you think? How does it stack up to last year's entry, "Nuk Mundem Pa Ty/It's All About You" from the lovely Juliana Pasha? It came in 16th place in Oslo's final, after a 6th place semifinal finish. Do you think Aurela will be able to best Juliana's benchmark, or even the national-record 7th place, set by Anjeza Shahini's "The Image of You" back in 2004? I like the drama that Aurela brings to the song (not to mention her incredibly strong vocal prowess), and I'm still looking for lyrics to connect to the powerful melody. Let's see what the future holds for this one!